Social Question

Is "Polar Vortex" a new term to stoke up weather hysteria?

I live in the Great Lakes area. For the first time since I was a teenager, it got really, really cold, and tomorrow is expected to be quite cold as well.

Last time it got really cold around here, the weather experts referred to a “Frigid Arctic Air Mass”. Sounds reasonable.

But I guess that is just not scary enough anymore.

Last night, and this morning, they referred to it as a “Polar Vortex”.

Now that sounds plenty scary. Enough to make a Global Warming Cassandra give two thumbs up. Are the halcyon days of the Frigid Arctic Air Mass gone for good? Are we now destined to be doomed by the dreaded Polar Vortex? What will they call it twenty years from now?

So are you saying that the fabulous and attention getting term “Polar Vortex” was substituted for the old tried and true and mildly benign “Frigid Arctic Air Mass” around 2005, and I simply was not paying attention until now?

The fact is, that could be true. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention.

But speaking personally, I only heard the about the ominous “Polar Vortex” until the recent weather forecasts.

So I am not clear about something. Is the “Polar Vortex” something new and completely different, and the “Frigid Arctic Air Mass” obsolete and gone?

Or are they the same thing, just a name change?

I did read your response on the linked thread. When you said it was not well understood, I just figured I would not understand it either.

An Artic Air Mass rides the jet stream down out of Canada when the jet stream dips down South. A Polar Vortex gets pushed out of the Artic by a warm air mass North of It. It drives the cold down to us. Either way it’s friggin cold.

It is not ominous to be sure. But I bet it has appeared in the climate “narrative” because it sounds more ominous than Arctic Air Mass.
Can’t prove that, but I would bet on it. Thus, I think it is propaganda, not a sincere attempt to get the science right.
Anyway, like the folks above say, you can say whatever, it is fucking cold out.

A polar vortex is a persistent, large-scale cyclone located near one or both of a planet’s geographical poles. The Arctic vortex in the northern hemisphere has two centers, one near Baffin Island and the other over northeast Siberia (Wiki). When the centers of these vortices move, they shift large frigid arctic air masses southward, causing particularly low temperatures. Note that this has happened before, notably during the Winter 1985 Arctic outbreak. All the same terms were used back then as well.

Yeah, @josie it isn’t a new term, as @Kropotkin notes, but it’s newly adopted by the popular press. I remember -43 °F (-41.7 °C) and wind chills of 50°F to 60°F below back when we lived in Minnesota in the mid 1980s. This particular “Polar Vortex” isn’t as bad as that one was, but the media just didn’t call it that back then. I think the term is very descriptive, though. Otherwise, how could Atlanta, GA be colder then Anchorage, AK?

@josie So, by the media using an established and descriptively accurate scientific term—that’s been in use for decades in the scientific literature—the media is really trying to manipulate people’s emotions, and not trying to get the science right. Gotcha.

A vortex is simply a fluid in a spinning motion. In physics (and meteorology by extension), it’s not a scary word, it is just descriptive. But the media sees a word like “vortex” and seizes the opportunity to pump up the sensationalism – so they produce scary music, a snazzy, animated graphic, and the vague sense that you’re about to experience a sharknado.

The term isn’t new. But the media are idiots, and their goal is to catch the interest of viewers who don’t know anything about this stuff, so they present it like it’s the new scary thing. It’s the media who are injecting the panic, not scientists.

@glacial has this correct. I can hardly even watch the evening news with out constantly picking up on what I describe as “subtle B.S.” that they layer cleverly into normal every day stories. They do it, we all know it. Most of us here probably don’t even watch the news anymore because it’s time we’ll never get back. Many people watching the news are like:“polar vortex?! whoa man that sounds gnarly” Then they proceed to keep watching.